


Monster Hunt

by Hopeless_1322



Series: Cecelia Beesly-Halpert-Schrute [2]
Category: The Office (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dwight's better at this parenting thing than he thinks he is, Gen, Kid Fic, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, midnight ramblings, monster under the bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 15:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18252233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hopeless_1322/pseuds/Hopeless_1322
Summary: An exhausted and scared CeCe is convinced that a hungry monster is lurking underneath her bed.A grumpy and equally exhausted Dwight is more skeptical.OR: Midnight monster hunt that tests both Dwight's patience and parenting skills. Pure fluff.





	Monster Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> I barely looked over this piece after finishing it, so apologies for any grammatical or spelling errors.

Dwight’s tired, bloodshot eyes burn as he closes his laptop lid with a soft click, the sudden loss of light from the computer’s screen submerging both himself and the rest of the bedroom into complete darkness.

By sliding his glasses and his laptop onto the nightstand, Dwight officially calls it a night. He still has a solid fifty pages of melodrama to read through tomorrow, but he’s honestly too tired to go any further tonight. Besides, his typical rule of thumb is to call it quits when the words begin to blur into an incoherent mess, and he’s currently well past that point.

For the last two weeks Dwight’s been up to his neck in work, trudging through manuscript after manuscript with the efficiency of well-oiled machine. 

But even with his venerable work ethic, Dwight finds his work time slipping over into his personal time, as it’s become a common occurrence for Dwight to spend his evenings hunched over the kitchen table, finding grammatical errors within saccharine pre-teen dramas and awkwardly worded erotica with unrealistic sexual situations.

The reason for such an influx in work is due to the Dunder Mifflin Publishing Company’s second downsizing within a year, leaving Dwight as one of the few remaining editors on staff.

Being such a rarity means more work, and more work means less sleep and less time to decompress, leaving Dwight an overworked, sleep deprived grouch.

“Dwight, did...did you just finish up?” Pam whispers drowsily, rolling over to wrap an arm around Dwight’s side and gently rub circles onto his shoulder. “What time is it?”

“Five minutes until two,” Dwight mumbles into his pillow, already half asleep and more than ready to be dead to the world for the next four and a half hours. 

Pam hums quietly in disapproval. “You can’t be getting enough sleep. Adults are supposed to get….what? Eight hours of sleep every night?”

“Fully grown, healthy adults would get between seven and nine hours of sleep every night in an idealistic world without deadlines and responsibilities,” Dwight replies in a barely audible grumble. 

“I think you should call in sick tomorrow,” Pam murmurs as she begins to doze off again. “You could just stay in bed all day...we’ll let CeCe stay home from school to keep you company, and you two can both snuggle up and watch the best of daytime TV, like….like _The People’s Court_ and _Maury_.”

“I can’t do that and you know it,” Dwight mumbles, his flippant refusal contradicted by the faint smile tugging on his lips. _God, how he would love to take a day off, if he could..._

“Sure you can,” Pam insists softly, hand running up and down Dwight’s stomach as she lets her eyes flutter shut. “I’ll make Jim….I’ll make Jim get up and unplug the alarm.”

Dwight makes a noncommittal noise in his throat before drifting off, finally managing to avoid thinking about the horribly predictable whodunit novel he’s been slaving away over for the first time all day.

However, the peaceful state of the bedroom doesn’t last very long, as only moments after Dwight manages to fall asleep the bedroom door creaks open, the light from the hallway spilling into the room and across the carpet.

“Mommy?” CeCe calls out softly as she creeps into her parents’ room, clutching her beloved stuffed armadillo, Cooper, to her chest. “Daddy? Papa?”

Jim, being closest to the door, is the one to wake up. He rubs at his eyes and yawns before stretching out his arms and beckoning for his daughter.

“What’re you doing up so late, baby?” He asks through yet another yawn, scooping his daugher up into his arms and holding her to his chest. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“No, Daddy, I think I saw a monster under my bed!” CeCe murmurs anxiously as she shakes her head. “I saw it, Daddy, I saw it’s head sticking out to look at me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jim asks with the barest hint of amusement. “What did it look like?”

“Like the big snake from Harry Potter, but it had these long whiskers like a cat. It was really big, too, I think it’s head was as big as me,” CeCe explains hurriedly, burrowing herself further into her daddy’s arms in search of comfort. “I think it wants to eat me.”

“It doesn’t want to eat you, baby,” Jim replies as he cards his fingers through his daughter’s messy curls. “There is no monster, your mind’s just playing tricks on you. Sometimes, when you’re too tired, your dreams stick around for a minute or two after you wake up, that’s all.”

“No, Daddy, it’s really there,” CeCe protests weakly, eyelids fluttering as she fights off sleep, torn between fear and exhaustion. “I saw it, it looked right at me.”

“Well, monster or no monster, you and Cooper are more than welcome to stay in here with your mommy, papa, and me. But I have to warn you, your papa snores,” Jim mumbles with a fond smile as he rolls over, sandwiching his daughter between himself and Pam.

CeCe considers her daddy’s offer for a moment, weighing her options as well as an impulsive six year old is capable of, and quickly decides that she’ll gladly accept refuge within this prized spot in her parents’ bed. 

CeCe worms her way underneath the covers, warm from her parents’ body heat, and snuggles into her daddy’s arms. All is peaceful again for a little while, long enough for Jim to fall back asleep, but CeCe isn’t contented for very long. Just as she begins to nod off, a horrifying thought pops into her head:

_What if the monster under her bed decides to help itself to her other toys for a midnight snack?_

CeCe shoots up from her daddy’s arms and bolts for the bedroom door, leaving Cooper behind in the sanctuary of her parents’ bedroom to ensure that he doesn’t become dessert.

Upon re-entering her own bedroom, CeCe turns on the light and eyes up her bed warily. 

Most of her toys are still safely nestled within her bundle of blankets: Princess Flopsy the worn-in rabbit (passed down to CeCe from Pam), Lucky the big, brown labrador (a birthday gift from Grandma and Grandpa Halpert), Winnie the calico horse (a baby shower gift from Aunt Kelly and Uncle Ryan), and stuffed Homer Simpson (another birthday gift, this one from Uncle Michael) are all safe and accounted for.

CeCe’s eyes dart over to her toy chest next, and she is immensely relieved to see that it’s still closed, an undisturbed pile of books atop of it assuring her that no hungry monsters went poking around inside of it in search of a snack. 

The next area of interest for CeCe is her dollhouse in the corner, as she’s scared that the monster decided to wreak havoc in miniature, plastic suburbia.

CeCe crouches down on the floor as she opens up the dollhouse, and she is once again relieved to find everything as she left it; Jemma is still laying in the bathtub, fully clothed, while Rosa, Brad, and Kaitlyn all lay inert on the kitchen floor.

So far everything looks safe, but CeCe is still unnerved. Just because the monster hasn’t struck yet doesn’t mean it won’t later on in the night, and CeCe is frankly too scared to do anything else but run away screaming if the scaley, snake-like beast rears its head again. The kid is still carefully maintaining a safe six inches between herself and the edge of her bed to ensure that the monster doesn’t dart out and catch her by the ankles.

How does she keep her toys off of the monster’s menu when she’s afraid she’ll be gobbled up herself if she sticks around for too long?

CeCe quickly decides that the only answer is to move all of her toys to safety as quickly as she can. Still being too afraid to approach her bed, she decides to begin by moving her Barbies and their house into the hallway and out of the monster’s reach.

Moving the dollhouse is much harder than CeCe had anticipated it to be, as the thing is too big and cumbersome for her to pick up, so she has to hook her fingers in through the little windows and drag it across the floor.

This tedious process produces a rather loud, rather aggravating noise that CeCe is terrified will draw the monster out from under the bed.

However, the noise doesn’t wake up any monsters, just an extremely tired and irritable papa.

“What the _hell_?” Dwight mumbles to himself as he sits up, hurriedly untangling himself from Pam as his right hand scrambles across the nightstand in search of his glasses. 

“What’s going on?” Pam asks worriedly as she’s startled awake by both the noise and the sudden movement. 

“Where’s CeCe?” Jim mumbles, still half-asleep as he begins to sit up, his quick search over the space between himself and Pam only locating a seemingly abandoned stuffed armadillo.

“Stay put, I’ll go check,” Dwight grumbles to himself, stepping into his slippers before padding out of the room and down the hallway to investigate.

He’s less than amused when he locates both the source of his noise and his daughter in the hallway.

“What the hell are you doing, Cecelia?” Dwight demands with a scowl, trying to sound stern but instead coming across as grumpy and thoroughly pissed.

This sour mood certainly isn’t lost on CeCe, a highly sensitive and intuitive child, and a look of panic washes over her face as she lets go of her dollhouse with a sound thud. 

“Do you know what time it is, Cecelia?! If we were in farm country, we’d be getting up to milk the cows and feed the hens in an hour!” 

CeCe fidgets in place, eyeing up her bed as an icky, sick feeling starts to spread from her stomach to her her head, making her feel warm all over in a not-so nice way.

Her papa never believes her when she spots ghosts and monsters lurking within her closet or peeking out from underneath her bed. He always brushes it off as CeCe’s imagination, and CeCe highly doubts that tonight will be any different.

Especially since Papa’s been in such a foul mood these past couple of weeks.

Mommy and Daddy tell CeCe that Papa’s been stressed because of work, and CeCe has noticed that her papa seems to be busier lately. So much busier that he has to bring work home with him in the evenings and spend all night clacking away on his laptop instead of playing dolls with his Star Trek action figures or letting CeCe help him with his crossword puzzles.

“Why did you drag your dollhouse out into the hallway?!” Dwight asks as he crosses his arms over his chest. “What are you even doing up this late?!”

“There’s---there’s a monster under my bed, Papa, and I think it wants to eat me and my toys,” CeCe explains nervously, casting a cautionary glance over her shoulder toward her bed to make sure that it’s still monster-free.

“A monster? Cecelia, that’s ridiculous,” Dwight mumbles with a shake of his head as he bends over to pick up CeCe’s dollhouse with a quiet grunt. “We’ve been over this before, there’s no such thing as monsters. They’re fictitious, made up to scare children into going to bed on time and eating their leafy greens. They’re nothing more than a cruel yet effective parenting tool utilized throughout the ages. Do you understand?”

CeCe pauses, as her papa has told her these things numerous times before, but she’s still certain of what she saw.

She knows that she woke up to find a monster looming over her, preparing to eat her, and she knows that she has to try and convince her papa to believe her before he gets too close to the bed.... 

“But I saw it, Papa, it’s hiding under my bed! You can’t get too close to it or-”

“Cecelia, the only monsters in this world are people; horrible, everyday people who look just look you and me. There are no vampires, no phantoms, no….no chupacabras!”

“It’s not anything like that, though, Papa, it’s a giant snake with whiskers, like the one from Harry Potter!”

“I highly doubt that there’s a fifty foot Basilisk crammed underneath your bed. That’s...that’s physically impossible!”

“It’s a smaller one, but it’s still big and scary,” Cecelia argues anxiously, still lingering in her bedroom doorway, heart pounding and palms sweating. “I saw it, I woke up and it was sticking its head out from under my bed! It...it was looking right at me, it was going to eat me!”

Dwight sighs out through his nose as his overworked eyes begin to water. It’s dawning on Dwight that he needs to change tactics if he wants to get any sleep tonight, as his beloved virtues of logic and common sense rarely work with distressed children. 

He needs to be softer, needs to be gentler in the paternal way that Jim and Pam insist he’s capable of. 

Besides, even if Dwight could get CeCe back into bed through the sheer force of his impatience and exasperation, he highly doubts he would be able to get any sleep knowing that she’s so upset….

“Nothing’s going to eat you, Cecelia...look, I’m right here and it’s not even trying to get me,” Dwight insists as he crawls over the bed railing to plop down into his daughter’s cozy nest of blankets and stuffed animals. “See? There’s nothing to be scared of.”

CeCe watches anxiously as her papa sits upright atop of her bed and welcomingly pats the spot next to him. “What if it tries to eat me again while I’m asleep?” She asks quietly, voice quivering with fear and uncertainty. 

“It won’t, I promise you, Cecelia. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

CeCe still doesn’t budge, gripping the door frame with white knuckles and staring at the end of her duvet with dismay and distrust. “I’m scared, Papa,” she whimpers softly. “You didn’t see it...it’s a big snake, and it wants to eat me.”

“It was just a waking dream, Cecelia, I used to get them all the time when I was your age,” Dwight says gently, sliding back over the bed rail to crouch down on the floor and peer underneath his daughter’s bed. “One time I woke up and saw an old woman standing at the foot of my bed, holding a small, headless dog in her arms.”

“Were you scared, Papa?” CeCe asks anxiously, the mere thought of such an unsettling sight giving her goosebumps.

“Very,” Dwight answers through a groan as lowers himself down onto his stomach. “I was suffering sleep paralysis at the time, so I wasn’t able to move and all I could do was stare. But once I fully woke up and was able to move, I ran out of my bedroom as fast as I could and went to get my mother, and do you know what she told me?”

“What?” CeCe asks, finally daring to take a step inside of her room, wide eyes glued to her papa.

“She told me that it was nothing but a bad dream, and that it couldn’t hurt me. She said that no matter how scary it was, no matter how bad it made me feel, that it was harmless.”

“Did your mom look for the old lady under your bed?”

“No, but she let me sleep with her for the rest of the night, and I eventually felt better about what I had seen…. I don’t see any snake-like creature under here, Cecelia, just a few dust bunnies and a half naked Barbie who’s in serious need of some TLC.”

“Are you sure, Papa?”

“Positive. Come here and look with me.”

CeCe hesitates, still shaken and afraid, but she trusts her papa. He’s never lied to her before (hence why CeCe’s the only child in her elementary school who doesn’t believe in Santa Clause or the tooth fairy), so CeCe slowly crosses her bedroom floor and lowers herself down next to her papa to take a look for herself.

“See?” Papa encourages through a yawn. “No monster.”

CeCe smiles nervously and nods. “You’re right, Papa...I don’t see it. Can you reach that doll?”

“How the hell did you manage to acquire so many of these dolls? I don’t remember buying you a single one…” Dwight muses more to himself than to his daughter as he hands her the dusty, half-naked doll.

“Aunt Kelly has a lot of Barbies from when she was a kid, and she keeps them all in these shoe boxes under her and Uncle Ryan’s bed. When she babysits me we usually play Barbies, and most of the time she lets me keep the Barbie that I played with.”

“Then your Aunt Kelly must have a huge doll collection, because you have quite the second-hand collection yourself, kiddo.”

“Mommy and I counted them once, but I don’t remember how many we found. Not all of them are from Aunt Kelly, though,” CeCe murmurs sleepily as she brushes clots of dust out of the doll’s matted, brown hair. “Grandma Beesly still has all of Mommy’s old dolls, and she let’s me adopt them.”

“It’s a good thing that there aren’t any social workers in the Barbie world, or else this little lady here would be going right back into the foster system,” Dwight mumbles dryly as he sits back up, rubbing at his now freely watering eyes. “Do you feel better now, Cecelia?”

CeCe still feels a little apprehensive about going back to bed; not because she’s afraid of being swallowed whole by a horrifying beast anymore, but because she’s afraid of having another scary dream. 

“Papa, is it possible to have two waking dreams in one night?” She asks nervously as she crawls into Dwight’s lap, sitting in between his knees. “I’m scared that if I go back to sleep I’ll have another one, maybe….maybe even a scarier one.”

“It’s possible to have multiple waking dreams in one night, just like it’s possible to have multiple nightmares, but it’s highly unlikely,” Dwight explains gently, shifting so that he can hold CeCe up to his chest and press a kiss to the top of her head. “You just have to try and think about something else, something happy.”

“Like what?” CeCe asks through a yawn as she presses her face into her papa’s thin sleep shirt and breathes in the comforting and familiar combination of lilac scented fabric softener and Barbasol that she associates with Dwight.

“Anything. What’s something interesting that happened at school this week?”

CeCe is silent for a moment as she thinks, trying to recall any event of interest but drawing a blank.

“I can’t think of anything.”

“Well, what did you learn?”

CeCe shrugs absently, snuggling further into her papa’s chest so that she can feel and hear the calm, steady thumping of his heart under her ear. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Why do your parents and I bother to send you to public school if you don’t learn anything?” Dwight asks through a frustrated huff, half heartedly considering this as a prime example as to why his daughter should be home-schooled. 

In Dwight’s biased opinion, which he acquired after years of his classroom being his kitchen and his teacher being his grandmother, home-schooling is far more effective than the public school system

“I just can’t remember what I learned right now, Papa,” CeCe mumbles sleepily. “We talked about getting a class pet, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Mrs. Simmons talks about getting a class pet a lot, but it’s March and we still don’t have one.”

“Class pets are pointless, anyway,” Dwight replies softly. “They always end up with a ridiculous name and have a nasty habit of dying in the middle of the school year. Your Uncle Michael has had several office pets, mostly hamsters named after the Three Stooges, and I’ve had to direct funerals for all of them in the office parking lot.”

“I wish I had an at-home pet,” CeCe whispers with a smile. “Emily’s family has a dog named Charlie, and he’s really cute. He’s small enough to pick up, and he has a fluffy tail. He follows me and Emily around when I go over there to play.”

“I wish we had a pet, too,” Dwight mumbles, resting his chin atop of his daughter’s head. “I had all kinds of pets growing up; dogs, cats, chickens, possums….I think every child should have a pet, they provide a source of unconditional love as well as reinforce the importance of responsibility.”

“Mommy says that we’ll have to pay more on rent if we get a pet, and that’s why we can’t get one.”

“We will have to pay a higher rent, but I think she’ll come around to the idea eventually. I know that your Daddy has, he’s been talking about getting a cat since they’re more quiet and independent than dogs are.”

CeCe smiles as she thinks of Grandma and Grandpa Halpert’s cats, a duo of furry, fat, lazy creatures that spend their days dozing in the living room, bathing themselves in the slats of sunlight along the carpet. 

“I like cats,” she whispers, only half-awake as he papa’s heartbeat begins to lull her to sleep. “Cats used to be African wildcats, right, Papa?”

Dwight can’t help but feel a twinge of pride as he nods, as he’s always both impressed and touched when his daughter proves that she not only retains what he tells her, but tries to apply it to her adolescent world of coloring books and Disney movies.

“Yes, they did. All of the big cats come from African wildcats, too, like tigers and panthers. Do you remember seeing the big cats at the zoo last summer?”

CeCe nods, letting her eyes slide closed. “Yeah, but...but the armadillos were my favorite.”

“I know. Armadillos are pretty cool animals, their species name is Spanish and it translates to ‘little armoured one’.”

It takes CeCe a moment to reply, as she’s only barely awake, her mind fuzzy with sleep. “You told me that one already,” she murmurs softly. “The lady at the zoo told me that one, too.”

Dwight hums, racking his brain for another random factoid about armadillos he picked up from a National Geographic documentary or an outdated wildlife magazine in the doctor’s office at one point or another. 

“Did I ever tell you that only one species of armadillo can roll itself into a ball? Or….or that armadillos are closely related to anteaters and sloths?”

When CeCe fails to respond after a solid minute, Dwight figures that she’s finally managed to fall asleep again, the big, bad Basilisk under her bed forgotten.

As gently as possible, Dwight hoists his daughter up into his arms and slowly rises to his feet, doing his best not to jostle her too much during the transition. He sets CeCe’s recently rediscovered Barbie down on her nightstand before moving to tuck her back into bed.

“Goodnight, Cecelia,” he whispers as he lays CeCe down in her bed and drapes the covers over her side. 

“Goodnight, Papa,” she replies faintly, eyes fluttering open just long enough to make out Dwight’s face staring down at her. She reaches out, silently demanding a hug, and Dwight complies, leaning over the bed rail to give her a squeeze.

Dwight means to pull away from the hug after a moment. He means to walk away from his daughter’s bed, turn off her bedroom light, and return to his own bed down the hallway.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, Dwight crawls into CeCe’s bed, flopping down on top Princess Flopsy. The stuffed rabbit's nose presses mercilessly into his tailbone, like a stray Lego against the heel of a foot, but Dwight hardly notices, as he’s already half-asleep by the time his head hits the pillow.

“I love you, Cecelia,” he mumbles as his daughter rolls over to curl up against his chest.

“I love you, too, Papa.”

Maybe Dwight won’t be able to hear the alarm clock from his daughter’s bedroom when it goes off at six thirty. Maybe he’ll even commit the mortal sin of sleeping through the damned thing and being late to work, but in that moment, with his daughter cuddled up against him and Princess Flopsy’s nose pressed into back like an iron brand, Dwight really couldn’t care less.

Work be damned.


End file.
